Re: [amsat-bb] AO-40: Plans for April-June 2001

[Margaret Leber <maggie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Williamson wrote:


> I think you mean "perigee" where you've written "apogee" above.

Ah-yup. You're right. Shouldn't write when I'm this tired. I have this 
"east" vs. "west" problem too...not a good thing for a pilot.

> I would be a lot happier if we could understand the cause of this

> effect before relying on it to carry us through to the preferred attitude.

And we'd be even happier if we didn't have to explain it at all. I 
guess, given that we don't know what's making the current direction such 
an uphill climb--if it reverses halfway around we'll know one more thing 
about it. Right now there's probably as much reason to expect one as the 
other.

I mentioned gravity gradients because I was scrounging for odd forces 
that could be acting on the spacecraft, to get other folk's imaginations 
going; this is pure brainstorming. Seems like I had the desired effect 
in eliciting your number 4. :-)

It's great to see some problems cast out on the assembled multitudes to 
see if it's true that "to enough eyes, all bugs are shallow".

Peter did say:


> Meanwhile, perigee height is decreasing steadily due to luni-solar perturbations...

That's a long-period variation, and not a secular one, I hope?

You know, I'm learning *way* more things in this business than I ever 
expected to when I got into it a couple of years ago, just because it 
seemed like a cool thing to do. ;-)

  73 de Maggie K3XS
-- 
-----/___.   _)   Margaret Stephanie Leber    / "The art of progress  /
----/(, /|  /| http://voicenet.com/~maggie   / consists of preserving/
---/   / | / |  _   _   _    `  _AOPA 925383/ order amid change and /
--/ ) /  |/  |_(_(_(_/_(_/__(__(/_  FN20hd / change amid order."   /
-/ (_/   '  K3XS  .-/ .-/    ARRL 39280   /___ --A.N.Whitehead ___/
/____ICQ 7161096_(_/_(_/__AMSAT 32844____/ <maggie@voicenet.com>


----
Via the amsat-bb mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org